The Cure for Pain
by letschangetheworld
Summary: Sometimes you have to experience death to appreciate life that much more. L/J.


**Nothing is mine**, except the little fluffy ideas that pop into my head randomly throughout my day. Please review?

* * *

Another warm wave of blood courses from the wound and travels like a steady river across Lily Potter's trembling hands and onto the gurney that the older man is sprawled across, flopping like a fish out of water and gripping randomly at things with his blood-covered hands.

"Sir, I need you to stop moving!"

The more the man moved, the more difficult it is for the twenty year old redhead to successfully plaster a thick gauze across the laceration that adorns the man's throat. As Lily presses her gloved palm down harder on the wound, the man starts to convulse beneath her wildly.

"Leave him!"

Lily looks up as another healer, Marion Lewis, stumbles by supporting an Auror she recognizes. Frank? Danny? Coltan? She can't put her finger on the name.

"Lily, leave him. He's gone. There are people who can make it, he's _gone_."

The young woman looks down and lifts her hands away from the man's torso where she had been giving him chest compressions; he is no longer moving and his eyes have rolled back in his head so she can only see the pure whites of them.

With a feeling of overwhelming sickness, Lily pulls off her latex glove and uses her shaky fingers to close his eyes. Swiveling slowly towards the rest of the hallway, Lily is positive she has never seen something so horrendous as _this_.

A dozen or so Healers are running wild with packs of gauze and antiseptic bottles, but it doesn't look like they are getting around fast enough. A few bodies litter the floor of the hospital; some moving, some not.

Lily feels an uncomfortable jolt in the pit of her stomach and is lucky enough to find a kidney-shaped tray on a cart against the wall to empty out her stomach into. After wiping the back of her hand across her lips in a vain attempt to clean herself up, she staggers her way down the hallway to the ward's desk.

"Potter! Potter, we've got back up coming but I need you to take these," Addison reaches over the counter and stuffs a few supplies into Lily's arms, "and go into room 4B7 to stitch up some minor injuries."

The young woman notices Lily's blank expression and grips her arm tightly to get her attention. "Lily, do you even know what's happened?"

Lily licks her bottom lip and slowly shakes her head side to side, her ponytail swishing. "No... was there an attack?"

Addison grimaces and gives her a piteous look. "No, sweetie. The Ministry was targeted... the main foyer, you know, with the fountain? There was an explosion." The blonde stops sort when she sees how steely Lily has gotten in the face. "What?"

"Nothing. Can I see a list of the patients you've booked in already?" Lily asks, dumping the medical supplies that she had been given onto the counter and reaching for the clipboard beside the other woman. But before Lily's hand grasps it, Addison yanks it away and shakes her head.

"You know I can't," Addison begins, looking down at the list and then up at Lily. "But I already checked for you. I haven't seen him."

Lily's lips part and she sighs heavily before thanking Addison and scooping up the medical supplies.

There seems to be more Aurors in the hallway now, as well Healers, Lily notices as she walks among a throng of hysterical family members who are yelling out the names of people they are searching for. She wishes they could help them, _she really does_, but there is nothing that the Healers can do but treat people and shuffle them off.

They have never been this overcrowded in the two years Lily has already spent here as a Healer.

Lily turns the corner, excusing her way through people and patients and other Healers, whom she gives weak nods too. She reaches 4B7 and glances vaguely at the plaque at the door before she walks in. It is a large storage closet; she assumes space is getting tough to find for the more minor injuries and it looks like a bunch of chairs had been picked out of thin air and lined along the carts and the shelves of medical and magical equipment. An assortment of people are seated in the chairs and Lily takes a deep breath as she tallies up what she is about to deal with.

Today of all days, disaster has to strike. She was rather looking forward to making James an extravagant dinner for their… special occasion.

--

"Is that the last of 'em, Potter?"

James looks up sharply, his index and middle finger leaving the cold neck of a man who had collapsed awkwardly on the floor of the atrium. His mentor and boss, Alastor Moody, is limping towards him. As James clambers to his feet properly, he notes how the older man's eyes seem to dance all over the place and how tightly he is holding his wand at his side.

"Yeah, unless Sirius found some survivors," James answers, rubbing the back of his neck and gazing beyond Moody at the group of haggard looking men and women who they had managed to find and rescue from the disaster that was once an intricate part of any Ministry worker's day. "How many…?"

Moody gazes at James, before he gives a shrug. "Last I heard was seventy. St. Mungo's is overwhelmed. We'll be taking these kiddies to get checked out over there after we've finished up. Now where's your twit of a partner?"

"Right here, you mangy pile of filth. Zero on my end."

Sirius Black crawls carefully over strewn bodies and comes to James' side, looking down briefly at the man James had been previously inspecting.

Alastor shakes his head in disgust but says nothing to the two men and instead motions for them to follow him away from the bodies and to the group of survivors.

"Once we get to Mungo's, I don't want nobody going off and finding friends or family," he announces roughly to the cluster. "You'll be going as you are to the emergency section, where I'm sure you'll be taken care of and all that. Alright, who doesn't have a wand?"

Several people timidly raise their hands, as the rest of them take their wands out with trembling fingers; James feels for them, he can't imagine what had happened down here.

"Right, you lot with me, you two with the one with glasses, and the rest of you with pretty boy," Alastor barks.

James can't help but smile at the pretty boy comment and glances sideways at Sirius to see him itching to reach over and strangle their boss. Shaking his head, he looks up to see a man and woman approaching and he pulls out his wand.

"Alright, ready?"

The three Aurors and seven odd survivors arrive out of thin air in the entrance area between two sets of doors; one leading outside into the lane that the hospital occupies, the other one leading into the emergency section of the hospital. Alastor, without a second's delay, moves forward.

The doors seem to sense somebody is approaching and swoop open, revealing the large waiting room off to the right surrounded by ceiling-length windows and the main foyer desk off to the left. Ahead, between the two, is the wide hallway that James has normally seen close to empty most days, but never in his entire life has he seen so many bodies occupying the space.

As Moody ushers the frightened group of survivors forward, Sirius turns to James to see him peeking around on his tip toes.

"Oy, beanstalk," Sirius hisses. James instantly drops to his heels and glares slightly.

"Why don't you wait at home for Lily instead of trying to spot her using your apparent x-ray vision? It's not like anything happened _here_. She's probably bogged down as it is."

As much as James dislikes admitting it, really hates to admit it, Sirius is right. Lily is probably dealing with her issues and problems at the moment and certainly did not need him barging around trying to find her.

--

But the house is too quiet for him, too dark, too empty, too without Lily.

James attempts to watch some television but it is one effing thirty in the morning (yes, it took that long for the clean-up and rescue effort when the catastrophe struck around four fifteen) and not much is on. Settling on some sort of game show, he closes his eyes and relaxes into the couch, the cushions pressing against his sore shoulder blades.

This, this life, has been getting tougher each and every day that passes. For some time now their schedules have been at odds, with Lily working nights occasionally and James going sometimes three days without seeing his house, his bed, his shower, his wife.

His _wife_. They have been married for almost a year and six months now, but shortly after their one year the war seemed to intensify three-fold and both Lily and James found themselves giving each other reassuring kisses and comforting cuddles more often.

They had even postponed the idea of children, the idea of beginning a family, purely because the thought of starting one in the midst of what they were going through was terrifying.

_It'll calm down_, Lily would repeat endlessly. _It'll calm down_.

Except James doesn't think so. It'll never calm down and he wants so badly to start a family with her, to see her round and happy and entirely pregnant in her own beautiful way. He knows that there will never be a right time for them to start a family together and wishes Lily would see that.

_She will_, James would repeat to himself endlessly. _She will_.

He's still in his own world, where there is a mischievous (it – he, she, who knows – will take after him) toddler running around toppling things over and getting into the cupboards, when the front door of the cozy cottage opens and momentarily the front entrance hall is bathed in the moonlight.

The door clicks closed behind Lily and she shrugs off her coat, searching the darkness for the knob on the wall that she would normally hang it on but failing abysmally to find it, she settles on dumping it ceremoniously on the ground. She's far too tired to care.

"James?"

Her voice is a whisper, a beacon that draws him back to the real world. Muting the incredibly annoying jingle of the game show, James straightens himself slightly on the couch. "In here," he calls to her, squinting.

Her ludicrously bright pink healer outfit appears in the arched doorway of the living room, except it's clearly splattered with blood and he grimaces openly as she leans against the wall, evidently exhausted.

"Crazy day?"

"I expect yours was basically the same," Lily counters, meandering her way to the couch and sitting (more like throwing herself) down next to her husband. "My feet are killing me and I smell permanently of blood."

James makes a face appropriate of stepping in something smelly. "Yes, yes you do."

"What time is it?"

"Exactly 1:43 am," he supplies, unable to stop himself from glancing at the dried blood on her. It makes his stomach turn and twist and do impressive somersaults worthy of quite a few 10s.

Lily evidently doesn't want to make the long, difficult journey to the stairs and up to their bedroom, because she's peeling off her outfit, her shirt first and then her slacks, and tossing them onto the table. Tonight she's unabashed.

James likes it and imitates her, stripping down to his boxers. The implication of Lily's previous actions are clear; she wants to sleep right there on the couch and he is more than willing to do the same.

After much fiddling around and adjusting of certain body parts, the couple finds themselves cuddled up across the couch, Lily practically laying across James entirely, her hands on his sides and her cheek pressed against his bare chest. There's no blanket but James hopes their warmth is enough, as well as the hot summer air from the open windows in the kitchen.

"Was it bad?" James whispers into the silence after a few moments.

"Horrible," she responds softly. "I don't want to go through that again."

"Me neither." He kisses the top of her head, wrapping his arms around her slender waist and resting his large hands on the small of her back, stroking at her soft skin.

Lily makes a noise against him. "I really hoped I'd get home and you'd be awake."

He raises an eyebrow, a little confused, but silent. Her breath is steady against his chest, fanning out onto his bare arm and he can feel her heartbeat through her bra.

"I was wrong, you see. Really, really wrong." He has to strain to hear her. "I think maybe… just maybe that you and I should start a family. We would be good parents, really great ones. And even though I'll worry my head off about it, I can handle it. I really can."

James is silent for another moment still, before he exhales against her hair. "Lils, I don't want you to do anything you don't want to. We can wait, its fine."

"James."

"Yeah?"

He swears he hears and feels her suck in and hold her breath before she murmurs, "I'm pregnant."

The living room sort of falls around him for a brief moment and it's just the two of them on that couch, snuggled close enough for him to imagine the pulse of another heartbeat through her smooth, flat stomach. He is effectively speechless for this is the last thing, _the very last thing_ that he imagined coming from her lips.

"You… how…"

She doesn't answer for several moments. "I went off the pill."

"And you didn't tell me?" he manages to ask in astonishment.

"I wanted it to be a surprise."

James is utterly mixed up, half annoyed and half amused. Sly minx. "So we were trying for a baby but one of us had really no idea."

"Yup." Her giggle is delightful against him. He tries really hard not to giggle in return because this is so overwhelming wonderful, he feels girlish and excited and giddy.

James can tell his wife is slowly drifting off; she had been attempting not to put all her weight (not that she was heavy, oh God no) but now she is fully resting on him, her heaviness a charming reminder than in a few month's time she'll be even heavier, her stomach stretched and taut across the womb that would protect and nourish their child, the child they made together.

He digs in his discarded jeans for his wand and summons a spare blanket from a closet (they have many and he isn't entirely sure which one Lily had put their spare things in). He drapes it across them, slipping his arms back underneath and caressing her sides, her back, brushing her hair from her forehead.

It's everything he's ever wanted.


End file.
